"Universal" Distribution of Inter-Earthquake Times Explained

We propose a simple theory for the ``universal'' scaling law previously reported for the distributions of waiting times between earthquakes. It is based on a largely used benchmark model of seismicity, which just assumes no difference in the physics of foreshocks, mainshocks and aftershocks. Our theoretical calculations provide good fits to the data and show that universality is only approximate. We conclude that the distributions of inter-event times do not reveal more information than what is already known from the Gutenberg-Richter and the Omori power laws. Our results reinforces the view that triggering of earthquakes by other earthquakes is a key physical mechanism to understand seismicity.